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Published: December 23rd 2011
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As we've been completely knackered and travelling we're going to recap a whole 4 days or so!
So on the 17th and our second day in Jaipur we are heading out to the Amber Palace in Jaipur which is found high up on one of the 3 hills which surround the city. We decided to take our video camera this time to do some filming on the elephant. I think this was the biggest concentration of tourists we have seen yet. Even though we are constantly told that certain places that we are going to are really popular with tourists, people neglect to add that most of these tourists are Indian anyway so it generally makes no difference (we're still stared at!). We're plagued by the many sellers of souviniers but, we are slightly becoming accustomed to ignoring the sellers and cracking out about 100 no thankyous.
We quickly got up to the 'loading deck' where you could simply step onto the seat atop the elephant. The march up to the palace was like a big elephant traffic jam. The elephants were quite imposing none the less and some were also beautifully decorated with paint on their sides and trunk. We reached the end of the walk and our 'driver' still couldn't help asking for MORE tip to give the elephant a banana. We had already shelled out a 100 rupees, it sometimes is like people are brainwashed and just don't seem to acknowledge they have just received something and keep asking for more, it's very odd and to us seems very disrespectful. It just seems to be the way here.
We trundled round the palace and also entered the temple and made a donation. After receiving a blessing the priest handed over two flowerchains and marked us with the typical red bindi spot. After visiting this palace Kush drove us to a couple of different forts. One of which was apparantly more like a lovers point, graffitied with the names of many couples. It had an amazing view of the whole city, which is enormous! It was strange looking down into the city listening to all the hustle and bustle (it seemed like you could hear the many different people talking, very weird!).
The other fort housed the world's largest ever cannon made which could fire 35km's!! and used something like 100 kg's of gunpowder per shot, apparantly it was only fired once and that was enough to ensure that the enemy King never even tried to attack for the rest of time.
After visiting these palaces and also stopping to take a few pictures of the Lake Palace (which ironincally kind of reminded me of the Fata Morgana in the Efteling...) we went to collect our jewellery we ordered the day before and seek out a textile shop to buy a sari. We where shown around a little textile factory and shown how things were dyed and embroidered. Later we were taken up into the shop area where we were shown what the company made for shops such as Habitat, Monsoon and even the Hema. We chose some materials for the sari and also for the traditional pyjama (for Dunc) and to our surprise measurements were taken and the finished product would apparantly be sent to our hotel later on in the evening.
Tonight was going to be an interesting one as Kush had invited us over to his uncles place to have dinner. First we stopped off at his little shack where his uncle sold pan (a sweet mentholy 'snack' wrapped in a certain type of leaf) ciagerettes and the like. He let us try a few things including pan... Pan is... interesting, I'll leave the description at that. We enjoyed the company of Kushes auntie, two neices and one nephew. The house was still half way into construction and finishing (as the money comes in, more bits get done). It had no windows, no doors and was yet to be painted. It's amazing to see how this family was living in these pretty cold and 'small' circumstances. Watching tv they all huddled onto the bed in the living room and stayed warm under a blanket. We'd bought a small wooden elephant as a token of good luck and appreciation for letting us eat with them, the gift received a giggle and found place in the kitchen. We ate some delicious vegetarian food here and some interesting mint curry flavoured crisps. After a couple of card tricks and foolery we headed back to the hotel.
We picked up our delivered sari and pyjama and proceded to try them on in our room, and yes they fitted, perfectly! Ready to wear on my birthday.
x Radhika
Welcome to the jungle
18-12-2011
After the day of 5 palaces/forts we went for a 3 hour drive to Ranthambore, which is a small town in the countryside where the main attraction is the jungle safari. So after arriving within about an hour we were crammed onto a canter (open topped 4WD bus thing) and bounce along to the entrance to the park. We went in search of tigers and any other weird and wonderful wildlife along the way. We did manage to see a tiger footprint but that was the closest we got to the elusive little catties, we did see what has become my favourite bird ever, a more colourful member of the magpie family, the famous... treepie. Loads of deer, a weird looking antelope which we had previously been introduced to by Kush as "dangerous cow". A fat young eagle perched only 20 meters away, still a bit fluffly looking on the underside, sat assessing his surroundings near a huge brightly coloured parakeet. We drove past enormous trees elevated ten foot off the ground by a mass of huge thick roots, who's branches seemed to have their own seperate set of roots supporting them from the ground. Some trees we drove past seemed to have hundreds of invisible birds in them, you could drive right past a load of tweeting and see nothing, I was convinced they'd set up a few hidden speakers for effect.
On the way back the eagle eyed guide spotted a silly little bengal cat sprinting away from the canter at high speed, which I think is the only cat we've seen since our arrival. It's a sorry state of affairs i'm afraid, there are just no cats here.
That evening we met up with Kush and his cousin and went to the driver's restaurant where we all ate ourselves full for a total of 370 rupees or 5.30 euros. Later that night though something happened... It must have actually been the lunch at the hotel because Radhika was fine... It came up and out of every orifice, for the entire night. 360 degree dance moves around the toilet. The drive the next day was not the most pleasant of experiences. Enough said.
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